Lost Little Girl
by broken-inside-x
Summary: Smithy and Jo help CID investigate a missing child.  Will be Stevie/Smithy.
1. Chapter 1

"Right Mel, your on the reception desk and Nate, your on the Custody desk today"

Both PCs groaned in dismay at the idea of spending their shifts confinded behind the wooden counters. Paperwork sounded more appealing.

"But Serge, I'm sure its your turn behind the reception desk! Can't be swapping shifts just because your Inspector now"  
Only tiny Mel Ryder would be gutsy enough to question her inspectors orders. Then again he did remember comparing her to Lara Croft on her first day.  
"Yes Melanie. However Sergeant Masters and I have been requested up in CID today. So that leaves you on desk duty" he ginned down at her as she cringed at the use of her full name.  
"What happened to no full names? All this powers gone to your head!"  
Next to her Nate and Leon were chuckling at their lighthearted banter.

"I wouldn't be laughing if I were you PC Taylor. You and Kirsty are out on foot patrol. Try not to catch frostbite"  
Smithy's words wiped the grin off his face as he shivered at the the thought of braving the fridgid winds and November frost. It was Mels turn to chuckle lightly at him, atleast she'd be warm inside with an endless supply of coffee.

The door to the briefing room crashed open as Ben raced through, his black tie still in his hand and his shirt untucked.  
"Ah PC Gayle. Nice of you to join us. Good night I'm guessing? Area car with Sergeant Stone and tuck your shirt in Ben"  
"Yes Serge"

"Right guys, thats it for this morning. You know where I am if you need me. Stay out of trouble, specially you Melanie"  
She groaned again as Nate resumed his laughing.  
"Thanks Serge" she sighed as she pushed herself out of her chair at the front. The toothy smile she gave him, before heading for the door, betrayed her angry pretense.

With that his PCs begn to drift out of the room and into the corridor. Nate was still goading Mel about her name as he held the door open for her but judging by the smile plastered across her face he didnt think she minded Nate's teasing.  
Leon, Kirtsy and Ben followed. Kirsty rolling her eyes at the pair infornt whilst she pulled her blonde hair back into a braid. He could hear Leon questioning Ben about his night. He couldn't be sure but Smithy thought he heard Sally Armstrong's name being mentioned. He hadn't thought she kept intouch with anyone after she transferred out of Sunhill however he couldn't deny how close her and Ben had been, as both colleges and as friends. Especially after Emma had passed away.  
He spotted Callum about to leave and called out to him just as his hand touched the shiny metal handle of the door.

"Oi, Callum. Any idea what CID want?"  
"Yeah" his voice was rough and the bags under his eyes showed how little he'd slept since his father had died. He raked a hand through his dark hair which was already sticking up in every direction imaginable. "Missing kid. IC1 male, taken his year old daughter from her room last night. The mothers moving to France with the new fella. Roger took the call last night."  
"Looks like a long day ahead" Jo spoke as she looked up from the file she'd been pouring over all morning.  
"Thanks Callum"

Callum nodded once before turning to leave, joining Ben, who was already holding out Stone's vest and hat to him, out in the corridor. There was no point in asking if he was ok. Smithy knew well enough that Stone would say he was fine and just wanted to get on with the job.

"Right then. After you Jo"

He held open the door as she walked through, still trying to balance the folder of paperwork in her arms.

"Ryan Fitzgerald" she answered to his questioning look "Suspect in a hit and run accident last night. Victim's a young lad, he'll pull through. A broken leg and some cuts and bruises but the family want to prosecute. Callum and Ben should be heading out to St. Hughs once they've left here"  
"Looks like the night shift threw up some interesting cases"

Mel was already behind the reception desk when thet made it to the front of the station. The thick smell of coffee wafted towards them from a plastic cup that was balanced precuriously next to a stack of paperwork. She already looked bored sitting there, her head resting in her hand and her dark eyes straing dazily into space. No doubt daydreaming about PC Roberts.  
Her eyes snapped to attention as the doors to the station were pushed open, a blast of cold wind dodged around thr form and into the station, making her shiver.  
To Mel's obvious disappointment it wasn't a distraut member of the public looking for help but DS Max Carter.

A smug grin etched its way onto his face as he spotted the pair about to pass through the door that led to the CID stairs.

"Wrong way guys. Thats where the real policing is done"

"Oh give it a rest Max" Jo was used to dealing with the arrogant DS, she'd spent too long in CID with him and his sarky comments. He'd always had a certain disdain for uniform officers and had very little time for them unless they were trawling through CCTV for a result he could use to suck up to the DI, who never fell for his childish tricks.  
It had only been the other week when Max had been manipulating Kirsty into lying to Callum.  
Smithy, on the other hand, had to wonder how anyone put up with him. Surely Manson could transfer him to Barton Street or somewhere further away.

Maybe Antartica?

However he was determined to be a good inspector and not rise to Max's taunts about his oficers. Once again he held the door open for Jo as she smiled a goodbye to Mel who was currently glaring at Max.  
They were still ascending the stairs when Max shouted one last taunt.  
"DS Moss will be very excited to see you!"

If it wasn't for the image of Gina Gold with her disappointed face on he would have turned round and shown Max exactly why no-one brought that subject up, whether it would have cost him his job or not.  
Jo's fingrs curled round his upper arm in a suprising show of strength as she steered him up the last of the steps towards the double doors that led to CID.

"Don't even think of leaving me to deal with Callum!"  
The image of Jo trying to reign in Callum with his heavy build and impulsive actions was amusing enough to make him relax.  
"Now come on, we uniformed officers have a child to find"

And with that they headed straight for the briefing room at the back of the CID offices where the rest of DI Mansons team had congrigated.

Anxious to find the lost little girl

**Not sure whether i'm happy with this first chapter or not :S  
Ah well =/ please review :) thankyouuu**


	2. Chapter 2

"Danielle Fitzgerald, one year old. She's been missing since half 5 yesterday and this guy," Neil paused to tap his finger against the crisp photo of an ordinary looking man in a business suit, not the kind of guy the PCs in the room were expecting to see on the board of the incident room "Ryan Fitzgerald, is believed to be behind this. He also happens to be the kids father. He was sectioned just over a year ago after being arrested for drug offences. Since then his ex-wife seems to have done all she can to keep him from seeing Danielle. Including getting a restraining order taken out against him only last month when he tried taking the girl from the aunt's house. He was seen leaving the house with Danielle by a neighbour who then alerted the mother."

"Fitzgerald? Ryan did you say?" Jo called out from her seat in the middle of the room. "Now where have i heard that name before." She wasted no time in rummaging around in the chunky file that she'd had in her hands since she stepped through the doors of the incident room. This had been Neil's only clue that she was working on more than one case at a time, typical Jo Masters. Yet no matter how much he had disagreed about putting Jo in uniform he couldn't deny how well it suited her, she'd spent just as much time as before in the CID offices anyway. Usually gossiping with Stevie or baiting Mickey, or even with some terrified PC in toe while she worked on a case. "Ah, here we go. Ryan Fitzgerald. A car registered in his name was involved in a hit and run accident just after 7 last night. Leon and Ben found it abandoned a about a mile away from the Jasmin Allen Estate. No sign of Fitzgerald though Guv"

"Have uniform check it for signs of a child"

"One step ahead of you Guv" she quipped as she left the room, radio in hand. Smithy could vaguely hear her barking orders at Callum to leave St. Hugh's and head down to the car site immediately. It was that moment in time that that Stevie and Mickey burst through the door, the pair of them out of breath from running up the stairs. Neil had the horrible feeling that this wouldn't be good news.

"Guv, we've just come from Fitzgerald's flat. Nothing of much use there but Stevie found this." Mickey paused to hold up a clear plastic evidence bag with a single slip of paper inside. All eyes were on this tiny bit of paper and confused looks plastered the faces of his colleagues. Only Smithy seemed to recognise the significance of the paper and a sharp intake of breath signalled to the room that it wasn't good.

"A gun licence" he breathed as all eyes turned to face him. This changed everything. They were now looking for a mentally disturbed man who'd been in a road accident, possibly with both a gun and a child. Never a good combination. Jo burst through the doors, almost in the same fashion as the two blond detectives had only a few minutes ago. The radio was still gripped in her hand and Smithy could see her knuckles had turned white.

"Gets worse Guv, Callum's just arrived at the car site and has confirmed there is a children's car seat in the back. There's blood too, not enough to be fatal mind. Eddie can't confirm whose it is yet but it's looking like it belongs to Danielle."

"OK, we need to find this girl and fast. Jo could you get uniform onto it, see if you can find any CCTV from either the areas surrounding the accident of the site where the car was dumped. Grace and Terry, if you guys get down to the ex's place, find out how he got in and what she was doing at the time. I know it seems unlikely but we have to rule her out. Max get onto the phone company. See who he's been in contact with over the last few days and see if we can trace his phone. I doubt it but try anyway. Mickey, find out if he's any family, friends, known associates. That kind of thing. See if there's anywhere he's likely to go. Stevie and Smithy get back down to Eddie, see if he can shed some light on the situation."

Neil watched the Inspector tense at the mention of his name in relation to Stevie's. A quick glance at Stevie proved she'd noticed too, ever the observer that girl.

"Think you can keep your hands to yourself Inspector?" Max called out, his smug voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. Stevie looked confused more than anything and the sight of Jo's fingers curling round Smithy's arm in an attempt to save his job probably didn't help that matter. Yet the ever confident and witty blond recovered her sharp tongue in record time. The room stared at her as she turned to Max.

"Oh grow up Max, there's a little girl out there in danger and you want to play games?"

She turned and stalked out of the room, not even looking back at the inspector to see if he'd follow. Smithy however was rooted to the spot having just heard the arrogant DS get a verbal lashing. By Stevie Moss. Yet Max Carter was never one to give in so easily and he also recovered quickly.

"You'd better go after her Smithy. She might need protecting again" his voice was heavily laced with sarcasm and the room lapsed unto silence at the mention of the Devlin Case.

"Max, I'm sure i gave you a job to do. The lot of you, get to work!" The authoritative voice of the DI sent the room into a flurry of activity with Smithy managing to slip from the room, unoticed, to follow the small DS out into the yard where she was leaning against the side of his area car, her eyes downcast and the smirk that had been on her face only moments ago had vanished. She hadn't heard him approach so the sound of his deep voice made her jump.

"You OK?"

"Yeah. Lets go, we've a girl to find" and once again Stevie Moss had managed to reconstruct her walls around her before he'd even had the chance to find out why she built them in the first place. Was it to shut people like him out? or to shut herself in? He didn't get the chance to question her about it though as within the minutes she'd hopped into the passenger seat of the car and was waiting for him to start driving, the usual grin plastered across her face only this time he noticed it didn't reach her eyes.

**OK, i deteste this chapter! I'm sorry its so crap but it needed updating and any idea's i had all turned into this rubbish lol. Next chapter will hopefully be better.  
Thanks for reading :)**


	3. Chapter 3

"Ah, DS Moss. Always a pleasure." Eddie grinned at the small DS as she jumped out of Smithy's patrol car. She handed him her own coffee cup as she joined him on the path that led to Fitzgerald's abandoned car, watching as he gratefully took a gulp of the scalding liquid. It was 8 in the morning on a Friday and she knew he'd been out here since at least 7. "Inspector Smith, should have figured you'd be here. Do you two ever actually spend any time away from each other?" The comment was said lightheartedly but Smithy couldn't help but tense at the mention of their close friendship which had obviously come under some scrutiny recently.

"Eddie, what you got for us?"

"Changing the subject are we Inspector? Very suspicious" Eddie grinned at him cheekily, well aware that not many people could get away with taunting the Inspector about the small blond, he took another large gulp of the coffee before handing it back to Stevie and heading towards the car, lifting the police tape up for her to duck under. Around them uniformed police officers were collecting statements off nosey neighbours who'd come to see what the fuss was about. A gang of boys were hanging around near the corner of the temporary cordon and they didn't look too happy to see an officer heading in their direction, notebook and pen at the ready to take down names and addresses.

"Samples of the blood found on the back seat have been sent to the lab for testing although I'm pretty certain it'll come back as the kid's. " Eddie was gesturing wildly to the back seat of a black Peugeot which was littered with children's toy's and a car seat which had managed to unfasten itself from the seat belt. "The car's been in some kind of crash, the front of it's dented and there are tiny traces of black paint which could have come from another vehicle or a bike of some kind"

"That would tie in with Jo's hit and run case" Stevie was closely examining the back of the car, her gloved hands gently picking up a small teddy bear with the initials DF stitched on the bears paw. Smithy was surprised and momentarily distracted by the distant look that glazed over her features, her eyes closing as if to clam herself down. It was only a second or two though before she composed herself, dropping the bear and lifting her eyes to meet Smithy's before quickly lowering her gaze again "What about the driver Eddie?"

"A mister Ryan Fitzgerald"

"How can you be sure?" Smithy questioned, unsure of Eddie's mind reading abilities. He was still watching Stevie out of the corner of his eye but she had returned to her normal cheery self, smiling at one of Eddie's team as they passed her on the way to his van. She was now leafing through papers that she'd found in the front of the car. Beer cans and cigarette buts were scattered across the font seat of the car, the CD player looked to be smashed and the door to the glove compartment had a dent the shape of a fist in it. Each clue adding tiny pieces of information to what they already knew about Ryan Fitzgerald.

"You didn't happen to find his passport did you Eddie?" Stevie chuckled from the other side of the car as she held up an old looking passport, the corners of it curled inwards with age. "You need some knew tricks Eddie!"

"If you think I'm that predictable then you won't want to hear about the little black book then will you?" He stared at them, watching as their eyes grew wide with the thought that he'd actually found something useful. "Thought so. This was found under the front seat along with this" He held up two separate evidence bags, the clear plastic showing a small black book just as Eddie had described and the other showing a small bag of white powder, what looked to be cocaine which raised the stakes for the officers at SunHill. Smithy took the bag containing the book off Eddie and gently flipped the faded pages. Inside were names and addresses, even some numbers. He recognised a few names in the book as well known drug dealers in the SunHill area, people they knew about but had no evidence to charge.

"It OK to take this back with us?"

"Knock yourself out mate. I'll bring the lab results down when they come back" Eddie called turned around to check a clipboard that he'd been handed by a nervous looking young man. The shake of his head only served to prove the kid had had a good reason to be nervous about handing whatever was on the paper to Eddie who didn't look in the slightest bit happy. "Oh and before I forget you owe me a pint for the early start! The pair of you!"

"Hear that Smithy, you've got the first round tonight" she grinned up at him cheekily as he lifted the tape for her to duck back under, anyone would think she couldn't lift it herself.

"I don't think so Moss. You still owe me one for winning the last bet we had. What was it? How long it would take Max to figure out we -no you- had nicked his warrant card" Stevie, ever the detective, had pinched the card out of Max's jacket pocket as they'd returned some evidence box's to the evidence room and of course she couldn't just leave it there, she had to run off and wave it around the station, making bets with various people on how long it would take him to notice, Smithy had won with a guess of under an hour and sure enough not only half an hour later Max could be heard cursing the small DS from the CID office upstairs.

"Don't count on it love" She grinned as she dodged a smack on the back of the head. He gallantly opened her door for her after chucking his hat and the evidence bag in the back of the car.

"Just get in the car Moss!"

**So I know I promised this chapter would be better but I lied. I did try it just didn't really work :)**


	4. Chapter 4

**Here goes nothing…**

"So what've we got? A gun licence but no sign of a gun. A crashed car. Some cocaine and a book containing well known dealers contacts. The guys sure running up a list of offences. Has he got form?" Terry had been pacing back and forth next to his desk for a while now, checking of the list of offences off on his hands as he went. He looked up at Grace who was now running his name through the system.

"He was clean up until last year when he was arrested for carrying class A drug. Heroin." She seemed unsurprised at this unlike Mickey who thought for sure he'd have a string of offences as long as your arm, especially since he'd racked up quite a sentence already. Then again, Grace always seemed to pick up on the small things before anyone else so maybe it wasn't such a shock he just hadn't noticed the signs. "He was then sectioned after knocking himself out in a custody cell. Barton Street dealt with it." She was interrupted by the doors to CID being pushed open as Smithy entered.

"Right, turns out Fitzgerald's been in the mental health system since his early teens. Callum and Ben have just got back from the mothers and he was diagnosed with a personality disorder at the age of 14. The guys bipolar. He could go from doting dad to child abuser in a split second according to her which is why she'd been happy enough to stand up in court and testify against him when Miss Morgan, the ex-wife, took the restraining order out against him as long as she could still see Danielle"

"Great so the guy's a nutter?" Smithy could only nod at Terry as way of explanation. The thought of someone as out of control as thus guy was with a one year old in their care was a scary thought and as Stevie came rushing through the doors with Max hot on her heels it looked to get no better.

"Ok so Eddie's just rang, they're just packing up down at the scene of the car however he did find the suspects mobile phone so there's no chance of tracing him through that. Said he'll bring it straight up when he gets back to the station and the lab results on the bag of cocaine will be back in a few hours. Uniform are having no luck with CCTV from the surrounding area though, we've no idea which direction they went in."

"Uniform seem to be slacking there Smithy, you might want to get that sorted." Max interrupted, a smug grin plastered over his face as he watched the Inspector tense at the insult aimed at his team.

"Yes because I see you've come up with some much useful information yourself DS Carter." He replied through gritted teeth, the reminder of Jo's plea not to leave her alone to keep Stone in line keeping him from lashing out at the obnoxious DS and his ridiculous remarks. Instead he turned to look at the little black book which Terry was now leafing through, his head nodding when he read the name of a familiar dealer. Grace was still typing away at her own computer, clicking away as her eyes flitted over the screen taking in the relevant information. Stevie was reading the screen over her shoulder when she reached her hand out to point at the screen letting Grace know to stop.

"There we go, for the last year he's been seeing a physiologist, first as an in-patient and now as an outpatient. A Mrs Helen Harte. Coming Smithy?" She grabbed the coat she'd dumped on her own desk before smiling goodbye at Grace who continued searching through any history of Ryan Fitzgerald she could find. Grabbing his hat and patting Terry on the shoulder, he made to follow the small blond.

"Make sure you pair behave when you're alone!" Max yelled after them, his voice laced with arrogance. Terry could be heard defending them though, his loud voice echoing through the corridor after them. Stevie showed no sign of having heard him apart from the slight rolling of her eyes, Smithy however found himself wondering how long either of them could continue to work in these conditions. He doubted it'd be for much longer, he wasn't sure how their friendship would last with Max tearing at the bridge they'd built with each other. When he'd been undercover she was the only one who'd been any good at making him feel slightly less stupid, she'd managed to keep his head high for him when Kieran Wallace had tried to drag him down. No-one else had ever done that for him and he didn't think he'd find anyone else who ever would. Even if he did he doubted they'd be able to do it with the same amount of sarcasm and the same level of witty banter that Stevie had managed to do it with. He'd be damned if he let Max Carter ruin that.


End file.
